Escape. Run. Hide. Close your eyes. Disappear. Pretend the world is not the world. Reality is a heart break, so we find temporary ways to tape back the pieces. I pretend I’m someone else. I let my hidden terrors flow through someone else’s veins. It’s not so scary when it’s not my face in the mirror. It’s my features, but it isn’t me looking back. For brief moments, I’m gone. The pain, the fear is stopped. For a fleeting second, I can breathe. Then just like a cracked dam can’t hold forever, neither can this. It all comes rushing back in. I can’t hide in someone else forever. I try to find other ways to hide from what’s trying to get me. I escape in others. I escape in vices, in nights I wish would last forever. Yet, the morning always comes. Eventually I have to wake up face to face with what’s been chasing me: my own damn shadow. My darkness, my self destruction is always right under my heels. It’s a constant fight to keep it my shadow rather than myself. That’s why, sometimes, it’s just nice to run, to pretend there’s nothing behind me.  When I run, there are no monsters, no sadness, no numbing disillusionment. Moments of brief freedom is my escape. Moments of brief freedom is how I get by. 

It’s amazing how once a day of distractions is done and you’re alone again, all those things you tried to suppress with those menial tasks reappear. So much time is spent pushing these parasites deep into your darkest corners and yet it takes no time at all for them to rise back to your epidermis. As much as you might try, you can’t rid yourself of these ghosts. They’re scars to bear, not wounds to heal. You can try to run, but learning to live with the hurt is much easier, not at first, the ease is eventual. Survival becomes easier.

The still water looks like glass. It appears as though if touched it would shatter. In reality the break isn’t quite the way imagined. The surface ripples. It doesn’t break in beautiful little pieces. It ripples into dull circles, disappointing repetitions.

There is so much unknown, so much uncertain. Am I making the right choices? Am I picking the right path to have the kind of life I want for myself? Or am I completely making the wrong decisions? I am staggering blind through this wilderness. I am unable to see ditches or clearings. There isn’t a blind fold I can remove. My eye sockets are empty. I have to trust that I will end up where I need to be. I must have faith in a path I cannot see. I am a larva, not fully grown. In between. It kills me not knowing if all will be okay. I know in the back of my head it will be alright, but this confidence is quiet. All I can do is trudge forward with abandon, even without my sight, my certainty. All I have is hope. Hope that at the end of this wandering I will find contentment on the other side of the woods. 

I don’t want to breathe, yet I’m gasping for air. I want to scream until there’s no oxygen left in the sacks in my chest. I want to wake up. I want to be electrified. I want stimulation, of any kind. I want truth. I want liberty. I want life to be well spent. No more days wasted, no more unspectacular moments. Though it seems the price you pay for one dose of pixie dust is a hundred dull moments. I’m just trying to make the mediocre, magical. My attempt is to make the most of the one shot I’m given; to really live in a world of only getting by. I want to be present in this hotel of vacancies.

The ability to create, the ability to rise every morning is such a blessing. To paint, to write, to be, to participate, to share daily is the ultimate gift. Everyone is capable of being a connoisseur in their own world. Art is one of the most personal things in life. It is yours, no one else’s. It is freedom, it is companionship, it is life for those who choose to accept and appreciate its personal magnitude.

You know those times, when one of those five tricky, little senses is stimulated and it sends your mind into a fury? Your brain goes into overdrive. That dazed, blank stare washes over your face. You go somewhere really far away, thinking of nothing and everything simultaneously. You’re not sad. You’re not happy. Numb: that’s where you are. Your head is temporarily paralyzed so you can contemplate all that your brain has to work through to make sense of things. Then someone catches you and inquires nonchalantly, “What are you thinking about?” In that instant all of those thoughts crash into the dashboard of your mind like a six-year old you forgot to buckle up. You are whip-lashed back into reality. You know you have to answer. And answer quickly, so as to not to seem crazy or to raise concern. If only you could sum it up in one response. If you could describe it at all! Yet, you know you’re not going to be able to find the words. “Nothing” you reply. The perfect response to not raise any more questions. It’s amazing though. All of those thoughts, all of those musings, reduced to one meaningless response. How suddenly “nothing” infiltrates and how easily “nothing” is forced to retreat.